| Thanksgiving Deer Hunt 2002 | |
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Saturday morning, Richard headed out to his permanent stand while I rode around to the same spot I'd parked on Monday morning when I'd shot the buck. I slipped on down and found a spot to sit down on my "stump" (folding stool), where I had a fair view of the opposite side of the small valley. Since the previous day's weather was so similar to that of the day before I shot the buck, and this was also a frosty morning, I was hoping to see some action, as I had then.
After an hour or so of sitting on my tiny stool, my legs were getting stiff. I glanced at my watch--7:47. I figured I would give it until 8:00 before I moved on, but I needed to stretch now, so I stood. As I did, I heard something to my left on the same slope I was on, looked over and saw a deer bounding... it soon stopped, about forty-five yards away, looking right at me.
Adrenaline filled my veins, my legs began to quiver, and vainly I tried to stay motionless. She would turn her head to one side and then look back. She even took a few tentative steps towards me, but mostly she just stared at me. I tried something I'd read about once, to control the shakes. I tensed up every muscle in my body for a couple of seconds, then relaxed. Now my knees became Jell-O! If anybody asks you, tell them that "trick" to stop shaking doesn't work.
I don't remember whether the deer or I moved first, but all of a sudden I was raising the Browning A-Bolt Medallion .338 Win. Mag. and she was bounding away. She circled and stopped broadside for just a second at about sixty yards, I put the scope on her and she started to take a step. I laid the crosshairs on her neck and in a microsecond I made the decision to start squeezing the trigger, figuring either she'd walk into the shot or I would nail her through the neck. She walked into it.
The doe went down immediately and flopped once or twice as I chambered a new round, and that was that. I grabbed up my empty cartridge case and my stump and started hot-footing it on over there. I'd gotten almost to her, oblivious to everything else, when a movement to my left caught my eye. I looked, and there was Waldo, wondering what the heck was going on. He was a big buck, bigger than any I've ever taken anyhow. He left about a second later.
I called Richard on my two-way FRS radio and reported to him, rather shakily and breathlessly I'm afraid. I do hope that I never lose the shakes and the thrill and the rush of the hunt, because if I do then it will be time for me to stop hunting.
I then dressed out the young doe with my Leatherman Juice CS4 multi-tool, which has an excellent knife blade and a wonderful little saw. I split the ribcage most of the way with the knife blade, but then the handle got too uncomfortable for me to put enough pressure on the blade to cut through the bone... but it was plenty open for field-dressing. I used the saw to split the doe's pelvis, and to saw through the hind leg bones of both the buck and doe during quartering, and also in removing the jawbones for aging purposes. I also used my Sunrise River Custom Knives Model 15 "Hunter/Camper" knife for all of the heavy and quartering work on both deer, and I remain very pleased with this high-quality knife.
This deer was 1-1/2 years old, and I had shot her through the spine and through both shoulder blades, taking out the tops of the lungs in the process. After dressing her out properly, I dragged her to the top of the steep slope, and got Ken's ATV to take her back to camp. Out of four hunters, only one other had seen a deer, so again I felt quite fortunate! Ashley spotted a small one-antlered buck, whose ear he had shot on an earlier occasion, to mark the deer for some strange reason.
My delicious doe.
I'd shot the deer with the Browning A-Bolt rifle in .338 Winchester Magnum for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, I like the rifle a lot and I hadn't yet taken any game with it. Secondly, I wanted to prove to myself what I already knew--that my handloaded ammo, loaded slower than factory groceries, in a rifle designed for much larger game, would do well on a deer without tearing it up.
The .338" 200-grain Hornady pointed soft point did no more damage than the 180-grain .308" Hornady pointed soft point bullet I'd shot the buck with. Both deer were shot through the spine and went down immediately, both died very shortly thereafter, and I found small fragments of lead towards the outbound end of each wound channel.
Some folks would call one or both of my cartridge and/or bullet choices "overkill" for hunting whitetail deer, but to quote Ken Waters on the subject, "you can't kill game deader than dead." In fact, smaller, faster bullets may well have caused a much greater mess upon hitting the heavy bones of the spine. I am a fan of having more killing power than I need, and that tenet has served me well--I have never lost a deer that I've hit. Additionally, I have never bagged a deer that was inordinately torn up by the shot.
Saturday afternoon I fiddled around in camp and then took the hide and leavings from the doe and set it out as coyote bait, since as a guest I was done hunting deer on the property. I hoped that the coyotes would find it overnight, and still be found on the scene the following morning, when I would be waiting for them on an adjacent ridge.
Sunday morning was another frosty one, and not long after daybreak I was in place on the ridge, eyeballing the area where I'd placed the bait. No coyotes or any other game could be found there, so after an hour I headed out, drove to the local dumpsters to dump the garbage, and found a public phone so I could call Mom and Dad to check in with them. Upon returning to camp I learned that only Ashley had seen any deer, and that was late in the morning, when he spotted a group of nine does.
Sunday afternoon
I sat over the bait a while longer, but nothing was happening there so I drove
around the property a little more, exploring. Then I headed back to camp, where
I got busy and had supper waiting on Richard and Ken when they returned from
hunting. They had seen nothing whatsoever.
